Dries Depoorter is a Belgian artist and programmer working at the intersection of art and information technology. He often touches on such topics as rtificial intelligence, surveillance, and privacy. Depoorter creates apps, games, and interactive installations.

One of his latest projects, launched on July 5, 2021, is called Flemish Scrollers. The software Dries wrote in Python, tracks YouTube broadcasts and recordings of Flemish government meetings. Machine learning algorithms identify phones in the hands of politicians, and face recognition algorithms identify particular people.

The videos of the politician using the phone during the meeting are automatically published on Twitter and Instagram of the project, if the parliamentarian spends too much time on the phone compared to the duration of the meeting itself. Politicians are gently asked not to be distracted (Pls stay focused).

Now politicians (however, only Flemish so far) can learn for themselves what constant monitoring is like. Perhaps, this will affect their work in some way.